Road-salt shipment delivers relief to depleted New Jersey towns

New Jersey’s highway agencies, counties and towns began to replenish their depleted road salt supplies Thursday after a ship carrying the much-coveted cargo docked at Port Newark.

With the threat of more snow in the fore­cast, Thursday’s shipment — along with the expected arrival of another salt barge early next week — is welcome relief to many road crews. But state officials are still concerned that there won’t be enough salt if more storms emerge like those that have dumped more than 60 inches on the region this winter.

“We are glad this ship has arrived today, but we’re not breathing easy yet,” said Joe Dee, a state Department of Transportation spokesman. “We will breathe a lot easier when we have significantly more salt in our domes ready to load onto trucks.”

The ship’s arrival comes as New Jersey officials have been fighting the federal government for a waiver that would allow 40,000 tons of salt to be shipped from Maine. It has been held up by a 93-year-old federal maritime law called the Jones Act that prohibits international vessels from transporting cargo from one U.S. port to another.

Instead New Jersey has sent a smaller, domestic barge up to Searsport, Maine, to pick up 9,500 tons from the salt pile. After a delay due to bad weather, the barge is set to reach Maine today or Saturday and will arrive back in New Jersey early next week just as temperatures are set to plunge.

The jet stream is expected to move south, pushing the milder air out and replacing it with an arctic blast beginning Monday and remaining here for several days. Highs are expected around freezing, with lows in the 20s, for most of next week, according to AccuWeather.

Snow is possible on several days, but it is too early to make any concrete forecasts, meteorologists say.

The five major snowstorms that have socked North Jersey since the beginning of the year have caused the state, counties and towns to all reorder at the same time. That has created significant delivery problems that have left many towns struggling to maintain their stockpiles.

Thursday’s arrival of a cargo ship to the International Salt Co.’s loading area at Port Newark was a relief to Passaic County officials, who plan to pick up a new supply today. “The level is low, at best,” Keith Furlong, a county spokes­man, said of Passaic’s dwindling salt reserves.

Bergen County and most of its municipalities are depleted as well, but they expect shipments over the next several days from their vendors Cargill Salt and Atlantic Salt.

The county has used all but 2,000 tons of its 42,000-ton supply, said Joe Crifasi, director of public works. With a logjam of salt trucks at Port Newark causing delivery delays, Crifasi said he was able to purchase 1,000 tons recently from a vendor in Albany, N.Y.

“It’s a safe amount remaining for what we expect to do,” he said, noting that the county will also receive an additional 75 tons delivered over the next four days.

Bergen’s 70 towns have almost run out of the 62,000 tons they have purchased this winter, Crifasi said, but he expects more salt to trickle in next week.

Executives at International Salt would not say how much salt is |on the ship that docked Thursday, citing “competitive concerns,” |but they said offloading the supply will take several days.

The ship arrived around 10:30 a.m. from Chile, where the company gets its supply from the vast Tarapacá Salt Flat, said Mary Kay Warner, the company’s marketing manager.

Warner said she did not know who was going to get the salt or how much over the next few days, but she said International’s customers include the state, counties and municipalities. Sales are up 136 percent this year, Warner said.

The state DOT, which is one of International Salt’s biggest customers, has used 442,000 tons so far this season, up from 258,000 tons last winter. Dee said the DOT has enough salt for one more major snowstorm, which usually requires at least 20,000 tons for the 13,300 lane miles that the agency is responsible for.

“We will get our share of Thursday’s delivery,” Dee said. “It will take a few days for the trucks to deliver to all of our facilities, but it will get there.”

Meanwhile, the barge will make return trips to Maine until all of the 40,000 tons are in New Jersey, Dee said.

New Jersey also has liquid calcium chloride brine as a tool for keeping the state’s highways clear, but it is used as a pretreatment on roads to melt the first flakes that fall and does not work when rain precedes a storm.